CHICAGO (NewsNation) — Pregnancy-related deaths are rising rapidly, painting a troubling picture of maternal mortality rates and causing a national health crisis for women in the United States.

The number of pregnancy-related deaths has more than doubled in the U.S. between 1999 and 2019, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

In 2021, over 1,200 women died of maternal causes in the U.S. compared to nearly 900 in 2020 and just over 750 in 2019, according to the CDC. The maternal mortality rate for that year was 32.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, the CDC reported. In 2020, the rate was 23.8 for every 100,000 live births and 20.1 in 2019.

According to researchers, Black mothers are dying in greater numbers than Hispanic and white mothers. But the biggest increase in death rates was seen among American Indian and Alaskan Native women.

“First of all, it’s access to care. They’re not getting care sometimes at all, not getting timely consistent care and you also see pre-existing conditions in minorities that you don’t see in other people making them prone to developing complications that can lead to bad outcomes,” Dr. Jamil Abdur-Rahmna said.

Dr. Idries Abdur-Rahman, Jamil’s twin brother, continued, “We are talking diabetes, hypertension, things like that. So it’s not being treated well or at all prior to pregnancy and then during pregnancy, because of all of the physiological changes and hormones, it gets worse.”

Medical experts said maternal mortality has little to do with a person’s socioeconomic status. Even track and field star Tori Bowie couldn’t outrun the epidemic.

The 32-year-old Olympian died in May this year from pregnancy-related complications.

Despite having one of the most advanced health care systems in the world, the U.S. still has the highest mortality rate among other wealthy countries.

“The solution is, it’s going to be funding,” Dr. Idries Abdur-Rahman said. “I’m talking to our government leaders. Proper funding for education, diet, research, nutrition and for healthcare. It’s going to come down to funding and money. We’ve got to put money in the right places in a sustained manner. It’s that simple.”

Dr. Jamil Abdur-Rahmna continued, “I also think we need to train health care providers, doctors, nurses, physician assistants and nurse practitioners to listen to patients. We all have this subconscious bias that we bring to our interactions with patients and we tend to not pay attention to what patients are telling us.”

And while this JAMA study was conducted pre-COVID-19, the doctors said a growing distrust in health care professionals during the pandemic meant patients were less likely to reach out to doctors and seek medical attention for pregnancy-related complications.

Dr. Richina Bicette-McCain said there has been a larger spike in maternal mortalities since 2018, noting that the coronavirus pandemic may have had a role in those statistics.

“During the pandemic in 2021, there was a sharp uptick, almost a 40% increase in maternal mortality rates. And, of course, COVID is partly to blame. There was a famous paper published in JAMA in February of this year, that showed that maternal morbidity was 2.5 times higher if you contracted COVID,” Bicette-McCain said.

However, she said COVID isn’t the only factor contributing to the increase in maternal mortality rates.

Bicette-McCain said when looking at the disparities, the racial disparities that exist, Black mothers are dying at three times the rate of white mothers. For the first time, during the pandemic, Bicette-McCain said people have seen the maternal mortality rates for Hispanic mothers become higher than that of white mothers. And so she said those racial disparities have to address what the cornerstones of the issue are: “implicit bias and institutionalized and structural racism.”

“We’re trying as best as we can through our diversity and equity and inclusion initiatives,” she said. “But for some reason, although we are just attempting to broaden access to health care and provide equitable access to health care, to all races, all genders, it seems to be such a political issue that there are a lot of parties who are opposed to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. And that’s where it starts with education.”